Field notes

The villages empty, the hillsides fill

A pair of eyes appears out of the blackness of a small cave, formed by boulders lying upon each other. Another pair of eyes peer out from behind the first. And then another. Fifty metres further up the hillside, ten children sit on the rocks of a dry river bed.

Children from a small village outside of Kauda in the Nuba mountains are now living in this hillside, their parents hoping to save them from the bombs that have already destroyed too many families here.

In the hills above Lwere, the drone of an aeroplane cuts through the air, and mothers and their children flee from the sun-dappled rocks where they sit overlooking their village, into a cave. The path that leads down from this rocky outcrop is littered by craters and bomb fragments.

Above Kurchi, where artillery booms from the other side of the plains, a grandmother sits under a rock, her head in hand as her grand-daughter sleeps behind her. Further up the hillside, another family has turned one cave into their kitchen, a small fire burning under a blackened kettle.

To read more about the conflict raging in the Nuba mountains, the Guardian has published the reporting of my colleague Matteo Fagottto along with my accompanying photographs
» Nuba mountains bear scars of Sudan’s forgotten war